start a victory garden and ration your IRRATIONALLY ANGRY feelings, part 3

lol yeah i’m at the same point w Tevas

please don’t take offense, I’m talking about a very specific kind of big bland floppy bucket hats because I associate it with mad elderly eco terrorists or w/e

omg healthcare patient portals are driving me fucking batty lately

though i think this is rational anger heightened by my own impatience

new specialist i haven’t dealt with much sends email with a checkup reminder
no phone number, just a button CLICK TO REQUEST APPOINTMENT
sign into the dumb portal
request appointment via an email form

later i get an email nofiication of a new message in portal (deep sigh)
i log into portal
open message
“please call this number to request an appointment”

RAAAAAAAAGH OMG WHY DID YOU NOT GIVE ME THAT NUMBER TO START WITH?

askdjfhsjqkwkrjeieiepv

Doctors seem to have the greatest +/- ratio of book smarts and knowledge of how the real world works.

My daughter's about ready to get her braces off, but the orthodontist is obsessed with her frenulum, the piece of connective tissue above your gums, right behind that divot under your nose. Should it get cut loose or leave it alone?

I'm all for hearing all the options, but listen. She's sixteen, she's had braces on since elementary school, let's give her a break. But no, I'm suddenly placed in this white room with a woman wearing a headset who slides a piece of paper toward me with a specialist's name and an appointment time during the first week of school.

"Look, I've got to talk to my wife first," which, yeah, is my go-to line for whenever I'm trying to get out of something. "OK!" says the woman in the headset. "Take this paper home to her and let her review it. If you decide to cancel the appointment, you can call this number." She draws a big yellow circle around the phone number.

"Have you already made the appointment? I'd rather talk to my wife and then we can set the appointment," I say.

"It's no problem to cancel the appointment!" she replies.

My doubts are no longer about my daughter's frenulum, but about the pushiness of this. "We don't need an appointment at this time. I'd rather cancel it now rather than during the first week of school."

She looks at me. Dead in the eye. And says to my face, "Are you still there? He wants to cancel the appointment now." The specialist's office had been on the line the whole time, listening to our conversation!

There's just this way-too-patronizing way medical offices deal with things. "You're going to this specialist." "You're going to use this portal." "Why are you calling us? Call 911!" "Oh, you want to make an appointment? Give us a call then."

this is 100% about them raking in as much cash as possible

I flippantly use the term "kickback" about these referrals most of the time.

There is an inherent conflict when the people who are telling you what services you need are the same people who will directly benefit from selling you precisely those services.

Dentistry, orthodontia, car maintenance. The people who tell you that you need a things are the same people who wish to sell you that thing.

I am not sure what to do about it. There is not (currently) an independent impartial intermediate advisory service that can tell you what you REALLY need, as opposed to what people wish to sell you.

The amount of sheer trust we have to have, just to frkn exist, is mind-boggling.

Do I need an oil change? A new roof? A colonoscopy? Braces? A radioator flush? I don't fucking KNOW. And the only people I can ask stand to directly benefit from saying "why yes, you do need that."

I like my dentist because she's always like "I don't like the look of this big, old filling.. but we'll just keep an eye on it for now, might need a crown at some point in the future" and then she says the exact same thing six months later... never tries to upsell me on anything

But it might be because my insurance short-pays her billings

an independent impartial intermediate advisory service that can tell you what you REALLY need

my insurance short-pays her billings

impartial likely isn't the word though...

here's one. when you're third-wheeling like I do and out to dinner with a couple, and you all forgot to tell the waiter how to divide the checks earlier, so he puts it all on one....but the couple you're with says "no don't worry, we'll figure it out ourselves". then they say "wanna just divide down the middle".

No! You're two people! I'm one! That's not an even split - three ways is! if we divide down the middle, I'm paying for some of your food! It doesn't matter that your finances are pooled, you ordered two people's worth of food, so pay 2/3rds of the bill. admittedly I didn't give a shit about this for a while but now that my finances are fucked I have to save every bit I can, and if I agreed to go out I did so because I was only planning to pay for myself! and i can't accept a 'well we'll get ya next time', cos there might not be one!

i don't know who this piece is even for, it's just increasingly a world where this is what passes for information.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/movies/news/people-are-memeing-the-premise-of-the-last-voyage-of-the-demeter/ar-AA1f6wpr

People are memeing the premise of ‘The Last Voyage of the Demeter’
Story by Michelle Jaworski

Universal is releasing its latest horror movie, The Last Voyage of the Demeter, on Friday with seemingly little fanfare, but many moviegoers are having fun with the discovery of the IP at the film’s core paired with his mode of transportation. It’s not just a horror movie or a monster movie. It’s a Dracula movie.

Inspired by one terrifying chapter of Bram Stoker’s Dracula (and the second Universal movie to stem from Dracula this year), it follows the demise of the crew of the Demeter, which had been chartered to transport Dracula and his coffin from Romania to England. In the novel, we’re given hints about what transpired through a series of captain’s logs that detail the crew members disappearing one by one until the captain is the only person who remains. When the ship arrives in England, the now-dead captain is discovered strapped to the ship’s helm.

The Last Voyage of the Demeter is being sold as Dracula meets Alien, and the trailer, which was released a few months ago, takes its time revealing who’s behind the grisly disappearances and murders. Nor is it hiding Dracula in promotional material. But with the film more under-the-radar than one might expect around a horror movie about Dracula, few people seem to know that The Last Voyage of the Demeter essentially has a premise that can be summed up as “Dracula on a Boat.”

It’s the rare IP-fueled movie that isn’t trying to capitalize on the source material; you might not pick up Demeter or recognize the ship’s voyage from Romania to England if you only have a passing knowledge of Dracula.

But there’s no denying it: “Dracula on a Boat” and #DraculaBoat are certainly fun to say, even if it’s a far cry from the more ominous tone that The Last Voyage of the Demeter is trying to pull off.

For one, it allows someone else to belt Lonely Island’s “I’m on a Boat.”

Several people used Oppenheimer memes to express the credulity of whether Dracula is even on the boat. (He totally is.)

The Last Voyage of the Demeter? Meh. But Dracula on a Boat? Now people are intrigued.

Not to mention what kinds of questions the title and premise set up for people to lightly poke fun.

The Last Voyage of the Demeter arrives in theaters on Aug. 11.

jfc even people who only saw the movie remember that fucking part of it. wow thanks for the insight, Michelle!

'Please create a password' [note: no parameters for doing so are listed anywhere on the page]

(enters password)

(red error text) 'Your password must contain at least one number'

(enters new password)

(red error text) 'Your password must contain at least one uppercase letter'

(enters new password)

(red error text) 'Your password must contain at least one special character'

(smashes computer monitor with bookend, faxes picture of two middle fingers to company in question)

An innovation I'd like to introduce is password entry screens having the password rules there for you to read - "OK, so one capital letter and one number, think I can guess what I put"

I assume that effecting such an innovation must be deeply complicated and/or prohibitively expensive. Otherwise it surely would've been universally adopted by now.

The sub-IA in this sitch is that I'll go in thinking 'okay, yeah, I know what password I'm gonna use here' but by the time I've had to reconfigure it two or three times it will be in a form that I will completely fail to recall the next time I visit the site.

(Yes, I know that there are technological palliatives for quandaries such as this but just let me continue to be a little bit of a Luddite, whattayasay 21st Century?)

those 'special broadcast messages' before you get to the main menu of an automated phone line should not take THREE MINUTES

"angry" is perhaps too strong of a word for it, but get very irritated when, as I am at one of the locations I have to travel to for work on a regular basis, I'm forced to pay to park in a parking garage that always has 15-20% of the empty spaces inexplicably blocked off or inaccessible and I end up forced to park on the roof, out in the elements anyway. not that I have a fancy car to be concerned about or anything, but part of the appeal of garages is being able to have even a little shelter from the heat and rain and I feel like if you are going to make me pay full price for "luxury" of parking IN a garage I should actually be parked IN the garage.

ch4 have gone straight from new episodes of tv series into repeats of an earlier series without making it clear. got about halfway through an episode before realising i'd seen it before.

life's too short to watch repeats of Old House, New Home

Linda Evangelista’s “what in my bag” video for British Vogue has turned me around on those hats

when you're in the middle of ordering something on a website, and it tells you that you HAVE to create an account to place an order (ugh), and then after you do so, it takes you to some home screen and away from the order you were just placing, and/or empties your cart.

when it asks for name and address and a) it's a download and b) you're paying by paypal which will supply the address for you

no sorry i absolutely cannot have these registered as irrational because this is heading into "shoot the developer" territory and all righteous men would allow it

my current number 1 innocuous thing that makes me irrationally angry is shower head grip brackets on riser rails that DO NOT ADEQUATELY HOLD THE SHOWER HEAD.
Either it's too loose, or the shower head is too heavy and flops down and can't be adjusted, or it's immovable.

It's 2023, sort it out.

Also making you register and put in all your personal details before giving you any postage costs, so when you abandon the order because sending it costs 3x the thing itself you will still be plagued with spam from the shop forevermore.

Do you have an old iPhone case that you're trying to give away for free on Craigslist? Make sure you make a new post every day, okay?

the problem is that enough people haven't seen the post

Having to renew our annual vehicle registration online and find out that, for the third time in the last five years, they've once again changed the third party payment portal, forcing me to once again create an all new registration and password for something I use once a year.

One small perk about living where I live now: if your car is more than 12 years old (ours is a 2009), you can get a permanent registration and never have to deal with that bullshit again. My wife just changed her license from NJ to MT and it's good for 12 years. They're very DGAF about some things.

sellers who re-post the same exorbitantly expensive items on my Discogs wishlist every single day

streaming services autoplaying whatever is next before the end credits even begin, forcing me to locate the remote in the dark to "cancel" said autoplay, often unsuccessfully

magazines I've subscribed to for decades that still include like four annoying, tree-destroying subscription cards

autoplay during end credits RAGH

sellers who re-post the same exorbitantly expensive items on my Discogs wishlist every single day

the beginning of the end in retrospect

Having had to do a bunch of highway driving over the long weekend - when the posted speed limit is 70 and traffic is generally moving about 75ish, but that one semi that is going 60.2 mph decides that it is absolutely crucial to IMMEDIATELY pass that other semi that is going 60.0 mph.

saw three out of four lanes taken up with overtaking lorries yesterday. the way some of them pull out is terrifying too.

Yeah, that too, the way they pull out really quickly in spaces that barely seem long enough to accommodate it. I mean, I'm not unsympathetic that the average semi driver is likely stuck with not great working conditions and held to borderline unrealistic deadlines where it makes that extra 0.1 mph add up over a long haul, but it's frustrating and, at times, dangerous, in the how and when they decide to suddenly overtake.

To the people that use to their feet on cross-walk light buttons: I get it, you didn't want to get covid, but using your feet is gross, use your elbow if you're still freaked out

Those trailers usually have restricted engines that can only go up to 65 MPH. So as much as they'd like to mash down on the gas, they simply can't.

Oh I absolutely know that and I get it, but maybe they should wait for a bigger opening and traffic and not whip into the adjacent lane immediately? But again this is the IA thread so I think it's fair for me to complain.

It's very fair of you!

To the people that use to their feet on cross-walk light buttons: I get it, you didn't want to get covid, but using your feet is gross, use your elbow if you're still freaked out

― Andy the Grasshopper, Tuesday, September 5, 2023 1:41 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

this is me but for toilets. i can only assume people who do this dont wash their hands after they shit.

^^ it me, but only in the absolutely disgusting public park toilets I've had to get used to over the course of my son's baseball season; i do also wash my hands tho

Don't these people have knees or elbows?

A certain Windows program that always opens NEARLY at full screen but NOT QUITE, leaving a nearly invisible gap between it's top right corner and the top right of the screen, meaning every time I go to close it by clicking where the big red X should be, I inevitably close whatever the program/window is that is open BEHIND it.

is it teams? I do that

Speaking of work there's a woman I work with that has wanted my position for a long time which is fine because many people have that position (anywhere between 1-4 on each project), So I talk her up to my higher-ups for a good 6 months and they finally give her the non-position of my back up but include her in all the management meetings.

Since this has happened she has barely spoken to me one-on-one (she used to call me every day) and when she does talk to me it's in front of other management where she nitpicks my ideas and talks over me quite aggressively.

Anyway, my point is, work is bullshit.

When the place that does the best catfish does the worst french fries.

bad french fries are a day-ruiner

I really wish fireworks would fuck off.

My dog was very curious about the fireworks some neighbours were just firing off in our communal gardens, but was not scared. He is now sleeping in his normal, untroubled whippet way.

Tbf, my cat is curled up next to me and besides a cursory glance at the last volley of noise, seems mostly unperturbed.

anyone who uses the phrase “can you just drop this (random document) into a powerpoint”
has never used powerpoint

if ONLY powerpoint would ever allow anything to be that simple